Ok, due to some enthusiastic pm's this morning from Sweden and ES user: Minimum expressing interest in the kit/fully built boards I have ordered 10 sets of components through ebay (this took a while to compile the list but I think its correct) anyway the parts are not likely to arrive any time soon as they are coming from china almost exclusively.

I will also order the PCBs for both SMD and through hole so that I have a stock of both boards.

haven't settled on a price for either yet. I will let you know once I have got the kits sorted and ready to post.

whereswally606 wrote:Ok, due to some enthusiastic pm's this morning from Sweden and ES user: Minimum expressing interest in the kit/fully built boards I have ordered 10 sets of components through ebay (this took a while to compile the list but I think its correct) anyway the parts are not likely to arrive any time soon as they are coming from china almost exclusively.

I will also order the PCBs for both SMD and through hole so that I have a stock of both boards.

haven't settled on a price for either yet. I will let you know once I have got the kits sorted and ready to post.

also I won a toaster oven for £6 so that will be my reflow machine once I get the solid state relay and the Arduino. Picking the toaster up tomorrow night.

wow, learnt a lot today.
Bob never needed to buy a paste stencil as he was intent on doing the soldering by hand. Took me a while to realise there wasn't a gerber file with related to the frontside pads which the fab house would need to make the stencil. Now I have produced a f-paste.gbr, I have past it onto Nancy at PCBWAY to make sure they can provide me with a stencil.

Non of this is hard but then none of it is easy, just a lot of things to keep track of.

marcos wrote:if you already have the toaster and you can look at the solder paste when its inside the oven... give it a try without a PID controller.

I use my oven every week in open loop, I just turn it on and look at the pcb while its heating. When I see the reflow I turn it off. Never had an issue, the reflow takes about 4min in my case.

True! I've reflowed this way too, but am wanting to be more accurate at it. Not that it would be overly hard to build my own controller. It's really pretty simple if you don't need lots of bells and whistles.

thanks for the tips, I will pickup the toaster oven tonight (chap rearranged on me) ssr relay isn't here yet or the PCBs, I will do a few test runs before the actual reflow of the boards. I think there is no harm in doing both. i.e. watching and having the pid work with a feedback loop to control the temp. This way I can mod the code on the Arduino to best suit the toaster oven I've got.

parts are all going to take a while to come from china so will update as and when things arrive.

Please state any interest for kits or reflowed boards here in this thread and I will update the post with interested parties as an when I see the pm/post.

My oven used to have a PID but I ditched it. The sturdy thermocouples that could stand the heat had a very long response time and it was different if the oven reflowed something before, coundl't get it to to work with the PID. Quick thermocouples lasted about of dozen of reflows.

whereswally606 wrote:thanks for the tips, I will pickup the toaster oven tonight (chap rearranged on me) ssr relay isn't here yet or the PCBs, I will do a few test runs before the actual reflow of the boards. I think there is no harm in doing both. i.e. watching and having the pid work with a feedback loop to control the temp. This way I can mod the code on the Arduino to best suit the toaster oven I've got.

parts are all going to take a while to come from china so will update as and when things arrive.

Please state any interest for kits or reflowed boards here in this thread and I will update the post with interested parties as an when I see the pm/post.

Assuming you do completed boards, then does that means you are going to test them too?

If it's kits, they cost less since the risk is on the buyers shoulders.

ElectricGod wrote:
Assuming you do completed boards, then does that means you are going to test them too?

Yes I probably do this by making up the sensors and drivers on a through hole board and creating a ribbon cable from the outputs on the smd pcb to the required places on the through hole board. I will test by driving my 4k hub with the prototype 6pak powerstage. I could really do with getting an oscilloscope.

ElectricGod wrote:
If it's kits, they cost less since the risk is on the buyers shoulders.

If it's kits I cant really accept liability for other people getting things wrong that wouldn't be fair. Its pretty bloody obvious that a kit would be less.

ElectricGod wrote:
any idea what you are going to charge for them?

Let me get them in and working and ill let you all know.

well a bit of an update...

I've had quite the back and forth with Nancy at PCBway.

Basically Bob thought hes 5v psu area was a bit cramped on his pcbs that he ordered. He shifted 3 components about in the kicad project to make a bit more space.

I sent the original old PCB files and then plotted the new paste layer for the stencil which PCBway picked up and held off doing the stencil. This was my mistake as I'm new to kicad and pcb design but I'm learning rather quickly.

I sent them a consistent set of gerbers once I realised the mistake.

Unfortunately they had already run the smd pcbs before confirming with me about the stencil so now I have 200 of the original design bob did (which should be ok). I then had to use gerbview to look at the two masks and see how far out the 3 parts Bob moved had gone to reproduce a paste layer gerber for the original file (bob never needed a paste layer having not intended to reflow them). Through trial and error and lots of checking i've managed to get close enough so i've ordered a stencil for the old design.

I will be checking this design works before sending any out in kit form or final product. Hope some of this makes sense to folk out there but basically the parts will be on there way to me from china soon via DHL as I have combined postage with the through hole boards.

Pcbs have left China now via DHL. I also received my nano Arduino and SSR for doing the control loop on my £6 toaster oven. Might get that made tonight. Have a thermocouple on my old Anet A8 printer heater block. I've since upgraded that to an e3d clone so it's surplus.

whereswally606 wrote:Pcbs have left China now via DHL. I also received my nano Arduino and SSR for doing the control loop on my £6 toaster oven. Might get that made tonight. Have a thermocouple on my old Anet A8 printer heater block. I've since upgraded that to an e3d clone so it's surplus.

Lots more things arrived in the post today, I was out walking the dog and they couldn't fit one of the parcels through the letter box. Probably the PCBs or my new 12g spokes. Anyway will get those Monday.

Lots of components have already arrived from China. Mostly the passives, non of the IC parts yet. Everything is tiny and I still need solder paste for the reflowing. Anyone with experience want to suggest any solder pastes?

Need to order an aluminium can electrolytic since I've reread bobcs post on the tantalum ones being too good and increasing the IC temp by 50°c

Lots more things arrived in the post today, I was out walking the dog and they couldn't fit one of the parcels through the letter box. Probably the PCBs or my new 12g spokes. Anyway will get those Monday.

Lots of components have already arrived from China. Mostly the passives, non of the IC parts yet. Everything is tiny and I still need solder paste for the reflowing. Anyone with experience want to suggest any solder pastes?

Need to order an aluminium can electrolytic since I've reread bobcs post on the tantalum ones being too good and increasing the IC temp by 50°c

Assuming that is solder paste. Thank EG, anyway Lebowski himself has helped me speed this up by sending a chip and some spare solder paste. We look up the kester EP256 as I will probably need more in the future. these haven't arrived yet and I'm still waiting on the thermoscouple and pcbs. Need to start and inventory to see what has and hasn't actually got here.

Hey whereswally, you mentioned a minor tweak in the PCB design... did those files ever get posted here? Also, glad to hear you got the boards (hopefully they are good... tho if enough people end up wanting these, a $100 re-order would likely be easy to account for with an extra $1-2 an order). How's it going as far as stocking the parts to populate the boards? (I haven't checked the BOM yet TBH, though assuming its not that many parts based on the board size).

I've been ordering so many small smd parts from arrow lately, just received my UniSolder 5.2 boards from pcbway yesterday... took less than 4 days from when I ordered to get them, and at an incredible price (they are almost giving away the < 100mm x 100mm 2 layer boards). But with 3 boards to populate, soo many little parts to buy (need to find a few more things before I have the entire BOM in my shopping cart... not exactly sure why, but searching for correct headers is a huge PITA for me versus all the other parts). Also finished putting together the circuit boards for one of the DIY Android spot welders... printing cases for it right now.. gotta program the arduino, and build the electrodes (just waiting on the terminals for the electrodes to be delivered). It's pretty surprising how easy it is to hand solder smd boards... always looked near impossible to me... but seems like the flux does half the work, technically don't even need a small soldering iron tip. The ONE recent purchase that drastically improved my PCB soldering was some 0.4 mm kester solder... always used a good brand of solder, but had MUCH thicker stuff (which still has it's uses)... but this thin stuff makes it soo much easier to do a clean job, so much more control over how much is applied.

I honestly just realized BobC had died... somehow glossed over that post when skimming the thread.... definitely sad to hear (TBH, not even sure how old he was.... or if it was an unexpected event). Hoping he was indeed old, and had a long life. I really appreciate anyone who is willing to share their work in an "open source" fashion, where their intentions have nothing to do with making money. Or even people who are selling their stuff, but at such a low price, where it's a fraction of what their time is actually worth. Seems like BobC contributed a lot... definitely a sign of a good person.